Poems for being alone

I spend a lot of time looking at pictures
instead of taking new ones
i’m inside-
staring at my computer screen
and all these representations of a world I am too afraid to be a part of
so i look at the pictures
and cry a little on the inside
inside and alone
but I’ll be leaving soon
very soon
and soon these pictures will be all i have
and when i walk out the door i won’t see what I once did
and left behind
and I’ll take some new pictures
if i can

_________________________


don’t forget the future was always the goal-
to go home with a purpose
and a paper,
but having grown down- into the gown
I remember myself as a senior in high school
I don’t think that I was wrong
I was happy, and hopeful
optimistic, certainly
naive, and now I'm a senior again
and I’m not as hopeful
and I’m not as, as anything
I wonder if it will change
when I’m home sitting on a beach
in the Cape Cod laughing at jaws in the sun
with beer
and all my old friends
and my name framed on a diploma
that reads;
this boy is complete
and I hope that I believe it

_____________________


here's to the forgotten
the beat down and lowly
at home- in their underwear
smoking black and milds
on welfare
collecting bottles
checking the dryers at the laundromat for quarters
for 40s of Olde English and for Ramen,
if they can’t find food in the barrels at McDonalds
and have already burnt their check
on a place to sleep and hang their hat
and drugs and booze and dice with friends
that they can fall until tomorrow
until they do it all again.
here's to the routine-
for them, for you, and then for me


__________________________



how can they see me
here and alone
how can they know all the things that i have here
this keyboard, perhaps
or this carpet from morocco
that stinks like fucking camel
but could be beautiful with the windows open
looking out to hell
onto something else,
they can’t know
but someone will



____________________________




she traveled from California
five hundred dollars each way
to bounce from house to house
friend to friend
as if they were all she had,


________________________


the future is silent as an ambush
it won’t play against you until you're close down upon it
bear until right on the edge
and then it shows itself and your subject to it
and hope only to be in the best place to fight it off
or ride the wave


____________________________



i wonder if my old man went through failures such as his father did
as i do
i don’t know them
but they must have been
the father carries the scars
and is as unsure, as i am
if they have changed
or stayed the same, at the core
and we’ve only grown but never overcome,
the pain of the past
and the silence of the future



_________________________________--



chairs, a table, bed, no more
all there, accounted for behind this door
en-tapped by fears
and less and more, of fear
or worse- the man;
butcher, preacher, doctor, student,
everyone, you!
look out the window!
watch wind work the grass
a-way, a-way, or towards you
some sent to die, some summoned close
wolves know about the moon
you can hear them howl
at fate, attraction, destiny
death, life, the mystery.
Hoooowwwwll


______________________________


It doesn’t matter what a man’s fears are so long as he can face them